


ex libris

by leaveanote



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), First Time Together, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Romance, Sex, Top Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 06:57:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20223694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leaveanote/pseuds/leaveanote
Summary: There are no stories like this one. In which the forbidden lovers survive and get to be together.If you want it, Anthony, you’ll have to write it yourself.-----They've barely seen each other since they saved the world, and Crowley's wretched with want. One night, Aziraphale gets himself in trouble again, and when Crowley goes to rescue him, the angel has something to say.-----Oh angel, I’ve loved you like a ghost story. Like a ballad, my dear, and a tragedy too. I’ve loved you like a sonnet and a limerick and a myth...





	ex libris

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OneofWebs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneofWebs/gifts).

There are no stories like this one. In which the forbidden lovers survive and get to be together.

If you want it, Anthony, you’ll have to write it yourself.

\---------------------

Most people think the Library of Alexandria burned down all at once. A cataclysm, an inferno that transmuted thousands of years of truth and wonder to ash scattered in the sand. 

Crowley started this rumor. 

He doesn’t take credit for it, lets Hell think the humans came up it, because the truth is, the lie is a kindness. How much more hopeless is the fact that what could have become a cornerstone, a turning point of humanity, spent centuries in decline due to lack of funding and care. That the burning was an accident and it was rebuilt after, only to fall into disarray again. Aziraphale visited on occasion, salvaging scrolls as he could, but avoided Egypt during much of this era. Crowley got the sense he was unwilling to watch as humanity does what humanity always does: destroy itself, letting the good and brilliant parts become collateral damage. (How can he look away from that? It’s inextricable.)

Then again, Crowley knows what it is to avoid a truth that can destroy everything you are.

Most people think the Library of Alexandria burned down all at once. Crowley gave them this. No one needs to think about the cruel fact that some things can be destroyed over generations, that what was once the most important thing in the world can turn to ash and sand for no reason at all.

The long loss shook him, but not as much as watching Aziraphale wrestle with mourning it. It was Her choice to let it burn, to let humans turn it to dust, and then they  _ did. _ Aziraphale wasn’t only mourning the books, but some of his faith in humanity, and as much as Crowley ached for the angel to lose some of that faith, it hurt him more than he thought it would, to see it happen. 

Fucking ineffability.

\------ 

Want is a wicked thing, which by rights means Crowley should enjoy it. But there’s nothing pleasurable about the hot agony pressing through the vessel of his human form, pounding at his temples like a taunt. It walks through him, eclipsing the rest of him, until he is paperdry and spare.

It’s so irritating it could make him sick, which isn’t even supposed to be possible, bless it all.

It’s been three months since the world kept going, and Crowley’s burned through every coping mechanism known to humankind to try and tame the aching want of  _ still not having Aziraphale. _ Drank a Thames worth of the finest wines and a Fleet’s worth of the shittiest, fucked his way through every willing body in the East End, swam the Channel end to end underwater as a serpent, and still, still he can’t rest, can’t get that cruel ache out from under him. 

He has barely seen the angel since. 

A dinner here, a bookshop pop-in there, but shit, they’d spent eleven years in a blissful excuse of proximity, actual apocalyptic (and failed) purposes aside, and now any contact Crowley makes with Aziraphale is a  _ choice,  _ and, fuck, if  _ that  _ hasn’t served him well enough to fry a hen for a lark (fuck a turn of phrase, no one’s listening).

Crowley leans against a gate across the street from a tombstone-grey business building high rise, his spine against the iron rod, aching. He gives a quick snap and the power blinks off. It’s back up the next moment but hundreds of pinstriped employees have lost what they were working on, and are about to take it all out on each other. He gives a performative cackle, realizing how ridiculous it sounds echoed in empty air, and stops, annoyed at himself. 

Of course, inside the high rise are rich men profiting off the most vulnerable populations. The brief blackout will cause enough spats that HR will intervene, and more than a few of those men will end up in significant trouble. 

_ Wouldn’t be any fun otherwise. _

Crowley arches back against the gate, groaning, and does a thing he tells himself he will fucking stop doing (a thing he does every other night, at least). Closes his eyes and pushes his power around the city, feeling for a gleam of supernatural power. 

Nearly every night, Aziraphale is in his bookshop. Occasionally, he’s slipped out to a cafe, and Crowley feels another angry pang (why didn’t you want me with you,  _ what’s wrong with me, he is perfectly alright to dine alone sometimes,  _ what if he’s not alone _ , fuck).  _ But mostly, the only flare of anything nonhuman is tucked in his bookshop. It’s almost like the thing humans do, reaching to their back pocket to make sure they’ve got their wallet, a tic, a habit. (A comfort.)

Crowley’s power radiates out from him  _ (like a halo, you pathetic bastard) _ , nudged in the direction of the spot he knows better than his own heart, and —  _ oh. _

A blaze of blank space.

Crowley springs upright like his body has been waiting for this. He barely registers the terror flooding him, the taste of ash-cloy and burnt story that never truly left, clinging, the fear a thing that swallows him whole; he’s so focused on pushing his power as wide as it’ll span, and then he  _ finds him,  _ not too far from where he should be, and Crowley’s entire being sags, boneless (well not quite, he catches himself, but just in time), furious with self-pity and self-loathing and  _ relief. _

He barely has a moment to gather himself before he realizes precisely where the angel has got to.

Crowley buries his face in his hands.

“You have got,” he growls aloud, “to be kidding me.”

_ Snap. _

——————

Moments later, all six guards in the vicinity dash to fight at the lavatories with a sudden onset of violent stomach problems, the three other inhabitants of the Scotland Yard holding cell are deep in a dreamless sleep that will last exactly as long as the stomach problems, and Crowley appears an instant later, arms folded, leaning casually (carefully) against the cold wall.

“Oh,” frowns Aziraphale. “That was rather cheap, wasn’t it? I’d somewhat hoped you’d do the uniform. It’s not a particularly _flattering _one, necessarily, but—”

“Angel, what the actual fuck.”

Aziraphale is sitting on a wooden plank of a bench attached the wall, unfettered. He is wearing his usual outfit, the pale cream of him glowing slightly in the dim of the cell. He looks exactly the same as always, wet eyes and creased face and artfully tousled fluff of hair and something inside Crowley crumples painfully, a sore and yielding thing. (Keep yourself upright. Gather those bones of yours, stack them straight, don’t let him see.)

“What?” Aziraphale’s eyes are wide. “Look, I had to get my hands on that particular edition of Elizabeth Mansfield’s third novel, it’s not my fault it was so well-guarded!” 

Crowley closes the space between them in three thin-legged strides, stopping himself right before he gets too close (oh), and flinging his arm from him to seize Aziraphale’s shoulder. He snaps again, the bookshop materializing around them, and snatches his hand back. (Did he feel it? The way your body shifts to cling to his.) 

“As if you’d stoop to  _burgling _ for anything less than a Georgette Heyer first edition.” Crowley says, then wishes he hadn’t. It’s the truth, but he had made sure Aziraphale did, in fact, already have every Georgette Heyer first edition, the very week Aziraphale expressed the slightest interest. They both remember this at the same time, and Crowley loops his steps around the duskglow light of the back room, putting as much space between him and the angel as he can bear. “Bit of a shoddy excuse for a robbery, anyway, isn’t it? How’d you manage that, didn’t want to use up a miracle in the middle of the street, or?”

Aziraphale stares at him. The shop encases them, a haven-place, and  _ oh _ , Crowley wants to nest. (Is it worse to look away first, or not at all? Keep moving, don’t let him see the ache in the corners of you, the parts where you join together, wanting to unfold.)

“Shall I crack the ‘78 Bordeaux?” Crowley asks. Fill the silence before it spills into something tender. That one’s a good year, hit right after a drought. It’s coming soon to a spoiling. 

“I missed you.” 

He says it soft but the dart of it comes hot and clear, coiling in Crowley’s twistgut stomach, piercing. Six thousand years and still something new. He’s never said that before. The mere curl of his tongue has ripped away a covering here, and Crowley’s raw and shivering inside.

“Aziraphale,” he starts. It comes out terrifyingly tender, pinktinged and bare, and he swallows the rest.

“You don’t come by as much as you used to,” says the angel, and the way the words stack on the way out his mouth can only mean he’s thought this over and over, and fuck, Crowley can’t look at him anymore. 

“You got yourself in  _ trouble _ because you wanted me to come rescue you, is that it?” This time the words spit from him, and that’s  _ worse _ . (I’m sorry, I can’t think, you told me you missed me, you missed me. You missed me.)

“Yes.” Blessed blue eyes still staring at him. “I wanted to see you.” 

“How stupid is that?” (Shut up, you’re making a ruin of this.) Crowley is a heartbeat in his ears even though there shouldn’t be one, the scatter of rain before something devastating comes in. “You know you’d see me again before long, no need to go making old books go missing just because—”

“Crowley,” says the angel, and rises.

The bookshop is damp. Smells of sourstuff and ancient things, thick dust and the scraped stolen animalhide that binds spines the best. The day Aziraphale opened it, Crowley saw something settle in him. Oh, it had been millennia. Floods and firestorms, empty-scorched plains coaxed into ravenous jungle and back again to bare. Wrinkling ridges beneath the sea pressed slow and thick and wide until they broke the surface, dried out and grew their own fresh forms of life, and the many words in many tongues for mountain and island came into being, along with those for adventure and distance and awe and drowning. 

Through it all, Aziraphale never seemed to really rest. Flitting and enjoying and exploring, certainly, but oh, when he chose to make a home here, he made it here, in this corner of Soho, and Crowley watched, and longed. They’d had a thousand makeshift houses apart, adobe and thatch, Danish apartments, raucous places long sunken, but those were all keep up appearances, and this wasn’t about appearances at all. The bookshop is Aziraphale, choosing earth. Making a place for himself in it.

_And it’s me too, this life we lead. Invite me over. Let me stay a while. We didn’t, before, when all we had were houses, dwellings, that would have been far too obvious. We let it begin because it had less intimacy than a bedroom. A middle ground, full of quiet voices sprawled on pages, a liminal thing. But what holds more intimacy than this? Than the place where you and I meet in the middle? This, this storystrung place, a kinetic memorial of human love and yearning and terror and brilliance and foolishness, this is where you have looked most at home._ _I’m here too._

And it is here that Aziraphale steps over creakplank floors, displacing dust, an angel shifting through millennia of story and morality and joy to stand before a demon and with a small, brow-creased smile, reach up and remove his glasses.

There’s a storm in the air outside, Crowley can feel it on his tongue. It won’t reach them here, under the stretch of shop, it won’t, it won’t. Thin paper and bleeding ink, safe, in here, from the wreck of rain.

Crowley wants to speak the angel’s name in the shape of a question, but he knows it will come out as a prayer. He parts his lips, his mind a fierce buzzing blank of a thing, terrified to ask, terrified to know, but then Aziraphale places his glasses on a shelf, takes Crowley’s bladeboned face in warm, tender hands, and answers anyway.

_ “Oh.”  _

The angel’s mouth is soft and giving under Crowley’s thin and trembling one. Gentle pressure and a spark of hunger, Crowley’s face cupped in his hands and in the center of it is this strange joining place of them, and Crowley’s body doesn’t feel like his own anymore. Aziraphale kisses him harder, makes a small sound Crowley has never heard before out of all the sounds he’s ever heard the angel make, and Crowley is frantic-numb and terrified, wondrous and remade.

Aziraphale pulls back but leaves his hands on Crowley’s cheeks, brushes his soft thumb there.

“Did you miss me?” he asks, and that question is a thousand questions in one. His eyes are anxious-wide. He is a bright-grey shape against the bookshop, this gold-dark space of whispering story.  _ His lips are damp. That’s from me, from me.  _

Outside, thunder rolls through the streets of a city, a city so much younger than they are. Here they are, ancient books and time-tired beings, beginning at last. 

_ “Oh,”  _ is all Crowley can manage again. His face is a wreck from being too many things very suddenly: absolute terror (I can’t lose you again, what if I fuck this up like I fuck up everything), a fool’s smile so big it hurts, a fair amount of confusion, and also inevitably a manifestation of the swoop of desire that, having been pressed beneath his skin for so long, courses through him like a live thing.

“I love you,” says Aziraphale, soft and firm and true, and now those words are in the world now, shared between them, an angel and a demon, Aziraphale and him. (They’re part of the story now, you can’t take them back, please don’t take them back, oh,  _ angel.) _

“I love you,” Crowley answers, but it comes out like a growl, like it’s coming from a part of his voice that hasn’t been used in an age, if ever at all, and, after all, his mouth is crushed into the angel’s again, that can’t help it, but he’s not stopping. “I love you, I love you,  _ I love you.” _

Aziraphale’s hands go around his shoulders now,  _ God yes, clasp me in you, make this an unbreakable thing _ , pressing their bodies together, and Crowley has never been more grateful for his corporal form, if it gives him this.

“My darling,” Aziraphale’s words are mumbled out between pressed kisses, Crowley’s hands seeking him now, reaching at last, going around the down-plush waist beneath the jacket, traveling up the expanse of hip-curve and soft back, leaning into him. “Will you stay with me?”

“As long you’ll have me.”

“I’m sorry it took so long, my dear, we might have had ages, who knows how long we have before they come for us—”

Crowley pulls back, cradling that cheek in his palm and looking into those eyes, blue as the center of a candle.

“Please don’t apologize, Aziraphale. Not—not if we’re here now. Not if we get to be.” A small, chaste punctuation of a kiss. (How many kinds of kisses can we share? Oh, I need categories of them, collections, entire volumes worth, please.)

“I just couldn’t risk it! I wanted you close, I  _ needed  _ you close, and I kept you as close as I could, but when I thought—perhaps—you could possibly want to be close as well, I knew I was endangering your life. It was selfish, I know, but I couldn’t bear to be in a world without you!”

That much, Crowley could understand.  _ Ash-muck and burning books, please, anything but this, don’t let the story end this way.  _ And that means—

“You wanted me?” His voice is low in his throat. Aziraphale’s eyes flick down to Crowley’s mouth as he says it, a gesture Crowley had seen a hundred times throughout their history, and had never dared to hope it meant what he thought it might. A twinge of satisfaction coils in his core. “All these years, you’ve wanted me?”

“I’m sorry!” Aziraphale entreats. “There’s no script for this, you know, no precedent—”

“You know that’s not true,” Crowley says, the corners of his mouth curling in a helpless sort of smile.  _ He wanted me. He wanted me. He wanted me _ . “You have nothing to apologize for, angel. But there  _ is _ a precedent—how many stories of star-crossed lovers have you got on your shelves?” He gestures quick, his hand eager to return to the angel’s waist. 

“Well—but we’re not—”

“We could be,” Crowley says softly, and something in Aziraphale’s face cracks. He flings his arms around Crowley, kissing him with a starving mouth, clinging hands, a present, ready body wanting to get as close as possible, and Crowley almost goes weak with joy and relief.

“I’m  _ not _ saying that’s why I’ve been collecting those stories,” says Aziraphale, pink-cheeked, when he pulls back for a brief moment. “But I did rather—find a sorry sort of solace in them. And to hear you just  _ say _ it like that—oh, Crowley—”

“We’re not like them, angel, you’re right,” Crowley murmurs into his mouth. One hand tangled in cottonsoft curls, the other clenching the shirt beneath the vest, and Aziraphale isn’t even complaining about the wrinkles. “But we’re a bit more like them than we are either of our sides now, aren’t we? And if you’re up for it, I’d—fuck it. I’d like to get this story told. This one right here, of you and I.” 

Aziraphale nods, feverish with want against him, the kind of heat that can be held and contained, not a burning thing but a hearth, much like the one that might be found crackling in the corner of a cozy bookshop.

“Write it ourselves, then, our own way?”

“Fuck the plan, we saved the world already, did that one. With whatever time we’ve got—this story is ours now, Aziraphale.” Crowley caresses his cheek, gazes into those oceanswell eyes, the closest thing to eternity on earth. “Let’s share it, yeah? Figure it out together? Write it ourselves. But, angel—not one of the sad ones, you know I don’t like those. I’m done with that. Let’s make it one of the funny ones, all right?” (Let’s make it good. I don’t want an ending, and we don’t have to have one, so please, let’s make it good.)

There are some things that, as they are happening, you realize you will never, ever forget. Even if you are millennia old, even if time doesn’t work in mortal ways for you. Crowley will never forget when he fell, the first day on the garden wall, the look on Aziraphale’s face when humanity let the first book burn, and the look on Aziraphale’s face right now. Crowley’s knows in this moment he will never, ever forget this: the shattering mess of unbridled happiness, the undeniable love. 

This is the first of these moments that’s actually happy, and Crowley gets this sudden, dizzying, stupidly romantic feeling that it might be the first of many.

“I love you, darling,” Aziraphale says, whispersoft and reverent. He looks into Crowley’s eyes, the shame and stain of them, and smiles his crinkling smile. “Would you like to come upstairs?”

——————

_ There are no stories like this one. _

_ Yet. _

_ Oh, love. Let’s make it a good one. _

The stumbleback path into a familiar apartment: same walls, same cushy bed with the tartan comforter, but Aziraphale’s a soft sure presence in his arms, their mouths a mess together, and nothing will be the same again.

They make their way to the bedroom without saying a word. It’s only when Aziraphale’s tugging him down onto the mattress that Crowley pulls back, propping himself above the angel.

“We don’t have to go fast, Aziraphale.”  _ I never want to make you say that again.  _ “Anything you’d like.” 

Aziraphale lies back with his head on the pillow, gives that wonderful, ridiculous little wiggle of his against the sheets, a fidget he does when he’s excited, and pulls Crowley in by his tie.

“I have been wanting your hands on me since the bloody Globe Theater, Crowley.” A sweet, drawn out thing of a kiss, the swell of a thigh pressed hot and high between two slim-boned ones. “I know we’ve got time, but—I want you _now_—_if _you’d like,” he adds hurriedly. 

“In that case,” Crowley says, hoarse with want. Aziraphale is looking at his mouth again, and he smirks. “Get those clothes off, angel.” 

Aziraphale lets out a sound nearly like the one he makes when he tastes something new and loves it for the first time. He shrugs off his jacket, scrambles to the buttons at his coat while Crowley tugs his own tie loose, peels his tight trousers off his legs. 

Neither of them use magic, this is miracle enough.

When their bodies are bare before each other, weird and wonderful smushy sorts of humanlike things, Crowley presses them close together. Tangles his hands in that featherfluff hair, feels the give and the push and the strain of the body beneath him, so physical and present and  _ real.  _

_ It’s happening, it’s happening, I actually get to have this. _

“I want to make you feel good, angel. Tell me how I can make you feel good.”

“Oh—I—” Aziraphale is blushing, teeth dug into that clever lip of his. His body ruts helplessly against Crowley’s, hard cock against his stomach.

“Tell me what you want, my love.” Crowley’s almost lost in it, the touch and the press and the want of him, but he’s anchored here by how badly he wants to make his angel feel good.  _ Let me give you this, stay with me. _

“I want you  _ inside _ me, Crowley,  _ please,” please _ , and that, of course, is all it takes.

Crowley doesn’t want miracles here but he makes an exemption for a sudden bottle of lubricant by the bedside, seems like a compromise anyway, and he gets his fingers slick.

“There was no need for that,” Aziraphale manages (Crowley’s teeth are light but hungry against his throat), “I’ve got some in the drawer, so you know. For next time.”

_ For next time,  _ and Crowley smiles into the curve of his neck. Oh, he tastes of salt and dust and skin and him.  _ More, please _ .

“You do, have you?”

“I thought of you, _fuck, _more than I ever should have. Oh, I can’t wait anymore darling, please—”

Crowley gets one arm beneath his soft waist, the angel arching his back, and he kneels between those round thighs, striped with pinkgold stretchmarks. He brings his fingers to Aziraphale’s entrance, and the angel is blushed with want but he nods quick, and Crowley pushes his fingers inside.

Hot, clenching, surrounding heat and Crowley’s cock goes so hard at it, Aziraphale gasping and immediately bearing down. 

“Oh, yes, yes, deeper, please,” he whines, and his face is a wreck of a furrowed brow and a grin, and Crowley obliges, pressing his slimbone fingers gentle but firm and deep, coaxing him open. He presses up, curling, and Aziraphale gives a sharp sound that slips into something keening and  _ lovely. _ “That’s it, darling, right there…”

“Made that spot rather easy to find, did you?” Crowley asks softly, overwhelmingly fond. “Fuck, you feel good.”

“I—it’s—”

“I like it,” Crowley says quickly, before there’s even the possibility of Aziraphale becoming embarrassed. “You can and you should, and I want to make you feel as good as possible.”

Aziraphale beams at him, rocking his hips down on Crowley’s fingers.

“It’s so  _ good,  _ Crowley—I’m—I’m ready.”

Crowley smiles at him.  _ Look at you. Lush and tight and wanting me and loving this.  _

“I didn’t believe in luck. But I really don’t know how it happened that I get to have all this. That I get to be with  _ you.”  _ Crowley moves his fingers steady, shaking his head in awe.

“It’s not luck, my love, it’s a choice,” Aziraphale says, and he manages to be firm about this even though he’s pushing down harder now, his own thick fingers making a mess of the sheets as he tries not to reach for his straining erection. “And I am going to choose you every single fucking day until the world actually ends, and as long as we’ve got after that.” A sweaty flash of a grin, and then he arches his back, groaning. “Now  _ fuck me, _ Crowley.”

Crowley leans forward, pushing his fingers even deeper into Aziraphale as he does, and kisses his mouth. 

“One last thing before I do, angel,” he murmurs. Aziraphale gives a petulant complaining sound which cuts off quite abruptly when Crowley moves his mouth down to his erection.

_ “Oh,” _ Aziraphale says, hardly a whisper.

“I’ve seen you looking at my mouth sometimes. Haven’t I?” Crowley works his fingers deep inside the angel, where he’s already open and slick and  _ fuck _ . “Was this what you were thinking of?” He lets his other hand come up to grab Aziraphale at the base, let his long tongue flick out against the smooth head of it.

_ “Kissing you!”  _ Aziraphale insists. One of his hands comes up to thread in Crowley’s hair, and  _ fuck that feels good. Move me, show me what to do, let me love you best, teach me how. _ Best of all, Crowley is almost entirely sure Aziraphale is trying very hard not to push his head down on it. “All right, perhaps—sometimes—I was thinking of this too. I just never,  _ ever _ thought you’d possibly want to— _ oh!” _

Crowley takes him full into his mouth. One hand tight at the base, the other still fucking him open with his fingers, and he lets his tongue trace the length of Aziraphale’s shaft before taking him deep in his throat again and again. The round smooth heft of him, deep into Crowley’s throat, the salt spilling from him, the hard and undeniable want, and Aziraphale’s gasping, running his nails soft against Crowley’s scalp, making no moves to hide how his body ruts up now, lost in it, murmuring bitten-off sounds of praise and love. 

And when Crowley pulls back, lets his fingers slip out, and kneels, Aziraphale’s halfway there already. He gets his legs around Crowley’s waist the minute Crowley gets his fingers slicking his own cock, and when Crowley positions himself and opens his mouth to ask, Aziraphale bites his lip and pulls him all the way in. 

“Oh  _ fuck.”  _ Nothing, none of his prior experiences could have prepared him for this. Aziraphale  _ gives  _ beneath him, and when Crowley sinks into him to the hilt the hot tightness of the place where they join is engulfing, nearly overwhelming, their magics mixing messy to make a strange and powerful thing, their bodies encompassed by the long-overdue relief of it. “How is it, angel? Are you okay? Should I make myself smaller?”  _ Anything, anything you want, let me shift my body for you, let me give you what you need, let me never, ever hurt you. _

Aziraphale’s face is a mess of want and arousal, his eyes half-fluttering, his kiss-wrecked wet lips parted, and he gets his arms around Crowley’s shoulders, tangles his fingers in Crowley’s hair again, and tugs.

“It’s even better than I imagined,” he says, his voice hoarse.  _ That’s what you sound like when I’m inside you, that’s what you look like when I’m inside you, oh help, oh fuck, oh yes.  _ “Get me open, Crowley, go slow, I want to feel all of you, but—take me deep, please…”

Crowley lets out a helpless low growl and does as he’s told. Knees splayed on the mattress, Aziraphale’s hips high, his legs wrapped around him. Crowley holds himself up with one hand and draws himself out nearly all the way, just the head of him still inside, and then watches himself press in to the hilt over and over, watches Aziraphale’s body shift to take him in, the curve of the stomach, the rise of the chest, the thighs adjusting, and that fiercely beautiful angel face. The way the lines of it pull and deepen. The pink mouth open and wet and moaning. The tension and release in that jaw and brow with each thrust. Crowley is lost in it, is found in it, something like a remaking. They’re joined, they’re like this,  _ this is what Aziraphale looks like when I fuck him,  _ the world gets to survive and they get to do this in it, and nothing, blessedly, will ever be the same. Crowley reaches with his other hand and wraps it around Aziraphale’s cock, stroking it slow and hard. 

“I love you, darling,” Aziraphale’s murmuring, his eyes fluttering open when he can manage it, “you’re so wonderful, you feel so  _ good,  _ you make me feel so good, Crowley.” They move unhurried, this deepfuck sex of it, this fiercely intimate entering, this steady, building, learning thing, the opening of their new chapter. Crowley doesn’t want to miss a moment, doesn’t let himself blink, drinking in Aziraphale’s every expression of arousal,  _ teach me how to make you feel good, I want to make it even better next time.  _ Aziraphale clings to him, encircles him with his lips, coils his fingers into his hair, moving with him, “You’re doing so well, my love,  _ fuck,  _ I’m afraid I’m going to want this all the time—” 

“Then you’re going to get it all the time, angel,” Crowley says, and kisses him. When he pulls back, they’re forehead to forehead, this sway of them, heavy and gentle at once. A plush forearm hot on his cheek, heels sharp against his back, his thighs growing tired, and this joining, this exquisite starspark of a thing between them. It’s the best fucking feeling he’s ever had, next to Aziraphale saying  _ I love you  _ for the first time and he says it again now, over and over and over as Crowley thrusts into him.

Crowley is full to bursting, this fresh swell, an entire litany, a library of loves. He almost thinks it silently, old habits, spent six thousand years pining alone, but Aziraphale is murmuring love to him with little stutters of “a little faster now, please, darling,” and as he does, pressing harder and faster to Aziraphale’s fervent nods, Crowley at last lets himself speak his aching heart aloud.

“Oh angel, I’ve loved you like a ghost story. Like a ballad, my dear, and a tragedy too. I’ve loved you like a sonnet and a limerick and a myth. The joy of you, the laugh, the torment, the bittersweet. Give me a neverending coda, give me, oh, give me the cheap cliché of the ten years later, give me a thousand more and a thousand after that and a thousand after that. I want the happily ever after. I want the love song now. I think I can learn the words.”

“Oh, Crowley, oh fuck,  _ fuck, please—” _

Aziraphale crushes their mouths together in a kiss before he flings his head backward, bearing down as hard as he can, and Crowley’s going quick now, stroking Aziraphale’s cock hard, angling himself to hit right at that spot Aziraphale wants him to. 

When Aziraphale comes, he does it with his mouth pressed hot against the inside of Crowley’s wrist. He goes tight and still, his fingers clawing at the sheets, Crowley fucking fast into him. And then he moans, a wretched, shuddering mess of a sound. His entire body trembles, Crowley’s hand relentless on his cock, and then he’s coming onto his chest and his teeth scrape Crowley’s wrist and this,  _ oh,  _ this is something new entirely, and it is wildly, wondrously,  _ good. _

When he’s done, Aziraphale’s face settles into a deliciously satisfied smile. Crowley  _ knows  _ that smile, or at least a bit of it, it reads like a much deeper satisfaction than the kind the angel gets from a well-made crêpe, thankfully. 

“Oh my love,” Aziraphale says, his voice hoarse and maddeningly sexy. He reaches to cup Crowley’s cheek. “You are magnificent.”

“Was that all right?” Crowley asks. He stopped moving when Aziraphale was done. He goes to pull out, but Aziraphale seizes his hips. 

“That was fucking marvelous, dear.” A soft smile of a kiss. “Now come on, I want you to come in me, if you can. If you’d like to.” A fresh wave of arousal flares through Crowley’s body.

“Are you sure? I can _ —” _

“Come inside me, Crowley. Please.” 

Crowley places his forearms on either side of the angel’s head. Aziraphale draws his thighs back to give him a more comfortable angle, no need to aim for that spot anymore, Aziraphale inviting him to go at the pace he needs, find his own pleasure inside Aziraphale’s body and follow it and take it, and this, this is just as intimate as before: this soft, needful rocking, Aziraphale murmuring loving, fucked-out praise into a kiss. 

When Crowley comes, he does it with his mouth open against the divot of Aziraphale’s throat, right before it meets his soft, damp chest. His hands are clenched in the sheets too, his aching thighs pushing him as deep as he can go, and Aziraphale’s holding him everywhere he can reach, tender and loving. He fills Aziraphale up and Aziraphale moans into it, sounding every bit as pleased with it as he was with his own orgasm, and when Crowley’s done, he opens his clenched eyes to find the angel watching him with such adoration he knows, unequivocally, that nothing will be the same again.

“Don’t miracle the mess away,” Aziraphale says quietly. “At least not this time, at least not now. I want to feel this.” 

“Oh, love.” Crowley pulls back to lie on the bed, and it’s too hot and very sticky but Aziraphale comes to him immediately anyway, curling up in his arms, burying his head in Crowley’s armorplate of a chest. Nuzzles in, makes a home there, makes it a pillow inside. 

“You meant it, didn’t you?”

“What’s that?”

“That _ — _ that you’ve loved me like a limerick, and a ghost story, and all that.” Aziraphale looks up at him. Crowley lets his hands play absently down the angel’s back, the curls at the nape of his neck. “That you want...a thousand years of this? And more?”

“Of course I meant it,” Crowley says, nearly too quick. His hands pause. “Look, I know it sounds like a load of nonsense, but I’ve been thinking it for a  _ very _ long time and I thought I could say it and I hope you don’t mind—”

“ _ Mind?”  _ Aziraphale lifts himself up, cups Crowley’s cheek in his hand and kisses him, open-mouthed and hard. “My love, I will never forget those words. I’ve been hoping for something like them for far longer than I want to consider, but like  _ that,  _ it’s like they were made for me...”

“They were,” Crowley says simply. “I love you, Aziraphale. And I thought that would only ever be a tragedy, and you know I hate the sad ones. But now we get to be here, and we get to finally do what makes us happy, and that’s all I ever wanted to do anyway.” His eyes are wide and so are Aziraphale’s, snake-yellow and holy-blue, and they’re brimming with love.

“We’re really going to write our own story,” Aziraphale says in wonder. 

“Oh, angel,” Crowley grins. “We begun a long time ago. We’re just getting to the good part.” 

\---------------------------

Most people think the Library of Alexandria burned down all at once.

You can look at it one way, at the fallible hubris and ignorance of humankind, for letting it decline for profit and prejudice.

Or you can look around at the world and think of how much has been rewritten since then, how much has been relearned and remade, how much is remembered.

Both are true. One doesn’t change the other. We are the stories we tell, in the end.

Something else is true. From the ashes of one of the earliest fires, Crowley mixed the soot with rain, plucked one of his feathers, and gave to Aziraphale the first quill.

That is how all stories began. 

Mourn what you’ve lost. But never forget, after the fire, there are always new stories to write.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, i hope you liked it!
> 
> this fic is for oneofwebs, who finally got me to write top crowley. there will be so much more now. i love you. <3
> 
> there's admittedly also a hint of drawlight here, there probably always will be now, so thank you too, you wonderful human <3
> 
> a small fact: the ‘78 bordeaux is known as “the miracle vintage.” because in a year when nothing was supposed to thrive, it did anyway.
> 
> check out my other fics! both fluff and smut, all with a lot of kissing. 
> 
> talk to me about ineffable husbands on tumblr @letmetemptyou <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Ex Libris [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20606282) by [originblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/originblue/pseuds/originblue)


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